School Concerts in the North

New Zealand Listener, Volume 34, Issue 877, 25 May 1956, Page 21

School Concerts in the North

NEW series of school concerts opens in Whangarei on May 28. The conductor for this tour, which covers the towns of Whangarei, Hastings, Napier and Gisborne, is Owen Jensen. Mr. Jensen is very much at home witb school audiences, and, on his previous tour earlier in the year, he had the audiences with him all the way, which is no mean feat with children, His programme. which he chose himself, is a

great help. A schools programme should have plenty of brilliant music in its composition, and should as well introduce the audience to the larger works which they will get to know later in their lives. This particular programme fulfils those conditions very well, It opens with the Mozart overture // Seraglio, and after a short introduction to the orchestra by the conductor-a brief walk through, with themes illustrated, the orchestra plays the first movement of Dvorak’s "New World" Symphony. Sheer technical brilliance is shown off in the Saint-Saens Violin Concerto No. 3, and with Francis Rosner as soloist the audience is assured of an exciting performance. Saint-Saens always considered the violin was the primadonna of the orchestra-and here his violin writing is very effective. The programme ends with two works by Englishmen, Some of Elgar’s Enigma Variations are played, and a rousing finale to the whole programme is given by the march from "Soirées Musicales," arranged from the piano part of Rossini’s musical satires by Benjamin Britten. This is such a striking piece, and is over so quickly, that on the last tour it was always repeated as an encore. The full itinerary is as _ follows: Whangarei, May 28; Hastings, June 18, Napier, June 19; Gisborne, June 21.